Mountain News

Helmets required for Aspen skiing employees

ASPEN, Colo. - The Aspen Skiing Co. has announced all of its employees must wear a helmet while on duty and clicked into skis or snowboards. Last year, the company began requiring helmets of employees seen as "influencers." Helmet use by guests and employees at the company's marquee ski areas, Aspen and Snowmass, is currently more than 80 per cent.

Companies tag-team to compete with Vail

DENVER, Colo. - Intrawest and the Aspen Skiing Co. have teamed up with a new pass targeting Front Range skiers and riders. The two companies, who operate six ski areas in Colorado, are offering a $299 pass for adults called the Colorado Trip Play Pass. For children, it's $249. The pass has a black-out of five days during Christmas week.

This is the latest major pricing salvo since Winter Park fired the first shot across its bow in 1999. Emulating a resort in Idaho, it began discounting its season ski pass. Vail Resorts soon responded, creating various packages good at its four ski areas along Interstate 70 and a fifth, Arapahoe Basin. Vail's most extensive offering, the Epic Local Pass, costs $519 and provides unlimited access to Breckenridge, Keystone and Arapahoe Basin, along with 10 restricted days at Vail or Beaver Creek.

Prehistoric camping site probed

BANFF, B.C. - An underwater diving team in October probed the remains of a prehistoric camping and butchering site now covered by a reservoir. The prehistoric people had camped on the shores of the original Lake Minnewanka. Successive dams have now inundated the prehistoric site, although the waters sometimes recede to expose a portion.

Clovis and other projectile points found at the site have established that the site was used about 13,000 years ago, as glaciers were receding. The oldest human habitation in the Americas has been established only to a little more than 14,000 years, although some archaeologists are convinced humans had arrived several tens of thousands of years earlier.

The Rocky Mountain Outlook
reports that the divers found burnt bones, stone flakes and other evidence that pointed to human habitation 9,000 years ago. "These were prehistoric hunters that were adapted to hunting primarily sheep," said Bill Perry, an archaeologist with Parks Canada.

Denver quietly tooling bid for 2022 Olympics

DENVER, Colo. - With little more than speculation, and a sparse amount of that,
The Denver Post
on Sunday front-paged a story about Denver's play for the 2022 Winter Olympics.